Despite having relatively capable HD video capture, the iPad 2 is a very poor stills camera. At just 960 x 720 pixels it's poor enough to ignore. A much better option for iPad 2 owners looking to get a good quality image from the device is to invest in a copy of VideoPix. VideoPix is a simple application that pulls individual frames from a standard iPad video source. We reviewed VideoPix some time ago and found it to be most capable. In fact, we recently used an iPhone 4 video grab (grabbed using VideoPix on an iPad 1) as part of a professional print design to great success, such is the quality of Apple's H.264 based frame compression.

There are two advantages in using VideoPix over the default photo option

1) You can to pick the best frame from possibly hundreds of candidates, meaning that you no longer have to worry about capturing the perfect moment. Simply shoot a small segment of video and pick the best frame later.

2) The VideoPix frame grab contains more raw information than Apple's default still photo option. A default still image is 960 x 720 pixels (see image above) but a single frame from the standard video capture is 1280 x 720 pixels. More pixels gives you more flexibility.

We are not suggesting that VideoPix will give the iPhone 4 a run for its money, or any other dedicated camera for that matter, but it's probably the best option for iPad 2 owners looking to capture the best stills that they can with Apple's newest tablet computer.

App Store Link: VideoPix